A Narrative on Legend Founded
by Silver Spider
Summary: Stakar and Aleta Ogord weren't always two of the fiercest Ravager captains in the known worlds... Part IV of Una Salus Victus
1. Part I

_**Author's Note:**_ This is my attempt to retell the Ogords' backstory, keeping the comic book canon elements I liked and trying to merge it into the movie-verse canon. This will be a 3 part fic, mainly covering the adolescent years of the characters and ending right after the ending of "For Whom the Bell Tolls". Enjoy and please review!

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 **A Narrative on Legend Founded**

 **By: Silver Spider**

When Aleta first heard Meredith speak of Terra, she thought that perhaps that was what Arcturus IV was like many generations before her time, before the whole world went to hell and fractured beyond repair. Like Terrans, the people of Arcturas harnessed the power of the atom and, with it, nearly destroyed themselves. In the aftermath of their exchange, only two factions remained: the warmongering Reavers, a race completely bent on the obliteration of the peaceful but sickly, horribly disfigured mutants.

Of course when she was a child, Aleta knew none of this. Or rather, she wasn't consciously aware of it. She'd always been told she was lucky. The daughter of a Reavers commander, she'd been raised with the absolute certainty that she and her family were naturally better than those that scraped off a living out there in the wasteland. They were going to die anyway, the adults around her reasoned. It was humane to put them out of their misery.

Sometimes the soldiers came back from raids with children. It didn't happen often because _healthy_ children were extremely rare out in the radioactive waste, but when one was found, he or she was brought back to be integrated into Reaver society. Aleta, only four or so, was there when her father and his group came back with with a little boy, maybe a year or so younger than herself. In hindsight, he couldn't have been cognizant of the fact that he was being taken away from whatever family he had, but his eyes were wide and alert, and that alertness had been mistaken as bravery by the Reavers.

Unsurprisingly he wasn't in her first class a couple years later. There were so few children that a single school - an academy - provided the educational space for the entire city. Wherever the boy had been for the last few years, he'd clearly caught up. Standing just a row in front of him in the class as all the children recited the Reaver pledge, Aleta noted that he wasn't speaking. Turning her head slightly, she glared at the boy. His shy smile completely disarmed her.

Over the coming years, he was always there, just in the peripheral of her vision. She came in first in most of her classes, as expected for the daughter of a now-general, but the boy was not far behind. The only place he was consistently at the bottom of the class was in physical education and combat. It wasn't that he was bad, just… uninterested. Aleta found this annoying to no end.

When she was fourteen, her instructors took a subset of her class to the very edge of Reaver territory, right to the ruins. She'd seen images before, even videos, but the real thing was nothing like that. The smell of decay was overwhelming. Everything was rotten: from what little plant life there was, to the crumbling buildings, to the… Aleta saw movement. Something was… crawling the rubble. Something that might have been humanoid once, but now was barely recognizable as such with skin covered in boils and face half melted off. The instructor was saying something about it being their duty to _cleanse_ Arcturus from this rot, but she only half heard the woman as bile rose in her throat. Many of the students were already in the rubble behind them, retching. She half turned to do the same, but the boy caught her upper arm.

"Don't." He warned, and she briefly wondered if those were the first words he'd ever spoken to her. "The instructors are watching."

On their long trek back to civilisation, she hung towards the back of the group. The boy wa still with her, and Aleta had the sensation that he kept glancing her way, almost as if checking on her. She should've been annoyed at that, but in truth she was mostly angry with herself for her own weakness.

"You must think I'm pathetic," she said, so quietly that only the two of them could hear.

He looked a little surprised, but quickly shook his head. "No. I'd be more concerned if you felt nothing at the horrors. There's no shame in having a conscience."

She wanted to say something biting, something akin to that she didn't need his pity, but somehow couldn't bring the words forward. It was the first time she'd ever questioned how her society did things. Only in the privacy of her own mind, of course, but the spark had been kindled.

"What's your name?" she asked the boy, suddenly embarrassed that she didn't know what to call someone she'd been aware of since childhood.

The boy smiled, apparently not at all put off that she hadn't known. "Stakar."

"I'm…"

"I know who you are, Aleta."

Right, of course he did. She searched for something else to say. "No family name?"

"Foundlings are wards of the state. We don't get family names. Not until successful completion of the First Contest."

Aleta winced. "Sorry."

"Don't be."

She took more notice of him afterward. In the coming years, they remained on the same academic track. At sixteen, Aleta went through her First Contest with ease, putting down a man twice her size in nearly record time for her class. She looked up at her father watching from the balcony overlooking the sparring yard and saw pride in the old man's eyes. In that moment, Aleta felt proud as well. She couldn't quite understand why, when her own eyes scanned the crowd and failed to find Stakar, she felt crestfallen despite her victory.

She did find him later though, predictably in the academy's library that had become his refuge between and after classes early on. No one else was present - few ever were - but he didn't seem to notice with so many thick tomes stacked all around the desk and an old map laid out on the table before him. If she wasn't still annoyed at his absence from the arena, she might have found it hilarious.

"You should be getting ready," she told him sharply.

He didn't even look up. "For what?"

"Your First Contest," she couldn't keep the exasperation out of her voice. "I hardly ever see you train."

"I'm not interested in training."

His finger glided over the surface of the map in front of him as if searching for something until it finally came to rest on some point that he tapped twice. Aleta felt her blood boil. _What's wrong with you!_ she wanted to scream. _Do you_ want _to die?_ Then she remembered the ruins, remembered that he'd been born to it. A small part of her, the one that her father and school worked so hard to cultivate, demanded he be grateful for everything the Reavers had given him. But the truth was that more than anything else, Aleta was afraid for him. She knew what a failed First Contest meant, especially for a foundling.

Not knowing what else to say, she walked out of the library.

It still bothered her though, especially when he didn't show up to any of the classes next morning. By mid-day, she went to search for him in the library again but found nothing but the abandoned books. Apparently no one had bothered to put things back where the belonged. Even the map still lay open on the table. Aleta walked over to study it, recalling how his fingers had traced a certain path that ended… She tilted her head, looking over the map. Beyond the ruined city of the mutants, there was another landmark that she couldn't quite make out. It might have been an even more ancient palace or a temple. Aleta couldn't help but roll her eyes as she realized that it was just the sort of place that would attract a history nerd.

There was no real concern that any of the instructors would report her skipping the rest of the school day. The year was almost over, and as an unwritten rule, most youths got a rare bit of slack right after passing the First Contest. Besides, the location on the map was a long hike away, but if she hurried, she could make it there before sundown.

The location turned out to be a temple, with crumbling, yet still larger than life, statues proclaiming that it must have once been dedicated to some sort of avian god. Generally speaking Reavers were agnostic at best, with talk of religion hardly encouraged, but she wasn't surprised to see it part of Arcturus IV's long-forgotten past. Carefully making her way through the ruins and around several traps that may or may not have been active, she found herself deep inside the temple. Aleta wondered around for a bit until she caught sight of the glow of an artificial light. Following it, she found herself in one of the largest rooms she'd ever seen. Covered from floor to ceiling in shelves contain books, maps, and scrolls, it easily dwarfed the academy's library several times over.

Aleta was not even remotely surprised to find him sitting in the middle of the dirt floor, piles of books and scrolls around him in a semi-circle. He was so absorbed in his reading that he probably didn't even hear her enter. At least he didn't look up, not until she was standing right over him.

"You certainly get credit for courage," she said, trying but failing to put admonition into her voice. "This place is riddled with traps."

To her mild annoyance, Stakar actually grinned and held up a piece of paper. "I have a map."

"Of course you do." She sat down on the floor across from him, but her eyes scanned the enormous room. "This place must be like a paradise for you. So many musty old books…"

"It's fantastic!" Clearly he hadn't caught the jibe. "I saw it in the distance on our last excursion into the ruins. Asking any of the instructors was useless, but I did a little research and… Did you know it's a temple of a hawk god? I'm uncertain if older cultures on Arcturus were monotheistic or polytheistic, but this one seems to have been very important judging by the size of the temple and the treasure hoard."

"Treasure?"

Something about that word, like it was straight out of a children's books, peaked Aleta's curiosity. As she grew, like all Reaver youths, she'd been taught to put aside such childish notions found in stories. But now everything around sang to her of adventure and excitement.

"There's rooms full of it," Stakar casually gestured in the direction of the hallway. "Precious metals and stones and the like, some archaic weapons. Probably useless to the Reavers now, but the historical value is… Actually, I like the books better."

Aleta actually laughed. "You're such a nerd."

It was more than she could ever imagine. Apparently he'd figured out the core of an entire ancient language most of the books were written in in under a day. Buried in his books, Aleta gave him some space and wandered around for several hours, until the nagging sensation that they should be heading back could no longer be ignored. Apparently he felt the same, because when she returned to the large room to fetch him, he was already packing but then looked at her with the first signs of consternation she ever remembered seeing.

"I can't decide which to take back," he all-but pouted.

Aleta rolled her eyes and pointed at the one that looked most likely to survive the return trip.

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 **Author's End Note:** The one fact I'm absolutely married to is that deep down, beneath all that Stallone tough-guy exterior, Stakar is an enormous nerd ^^;;


	2. Part II

_**Author's Note:**_ Thank you to all who reviewed! This fic will likely get a rating bump for the third chapter, because, you know, reasons ^^;; Also expanded it to 4 chapters instead of three since I'd like to cover a little of the scenes right after the prior fic. Enjoy!

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Over the next half year or so, they made several such pilgrimages to the temple until she thought the number of books he'd brought back and hidden all over the academy's library outnumbers those native to it. Not that it would've taken much. He spent most of his free time in the library, pouring over the texts, making translations, and even tinkering with some technology she didn't recognize. Sometimes Aleta joined him, and it seemed to her that he was searching for something, though what it was exactly she couldn't begin to guess.

"You really _should_ be training for your First Contest," she said another month later, now more concerned than anything else. She'd seen the other youths he was to compete against, and it made her more than a little nervous.

"What for?" he replied in the same disinterested tone that meant he wouldn't continue that line of conversation.

 _So that you can earn a family, a place in among us? So that they don't outright execute you for being an inferior and a burden on society?_ But even as she thought these things, it was hard to be angry with him rather than her own world. There was something deeply flawed in it. Aleta must have realized the first time she'd seen the ruins but it didn't fully sink in - or she didn't allow it to - until it threatened someone she cared about.

And she _did_ care about him, perhaps despite herself.

Already having moved beyond her initial question, Stakar held up a book he'd been studying.

"I found something interesting," he said, smiling.

"More history texts?"

"Not exactly." He held out a hand to her, and she walked around the table to stand in front of his seat. "I've managed to translate a poem, the one from that book you chose."

Frowning momentarily, Aleta did recall picking one at random during their first visit to the temple. She nodded and he pulled out the book, notes in his own handwriting clearly visible in the margins. He flipped the title page, studied the first, flipped again, and settled on the second. Aleta leaned back against of the desk and waited. For a split second, Stakar hesitated, then began to read.

" _On seashore far a green oak towers,  
And to it with a gold chain bound,  
A learned cat whiles away the hours  
By walking slowly round and round.  
To right he walks, and sings a ditty;  
To left he walks, and tells a tale..._"

He weaved a fantastical tale about a kidnapped princess, and a knight, her own husband, on a quest to bring her back while simultaneously fighting off giants, a wizard, and the princess' three remaining suitors to save his love. At that point, Aleta interrupted.

"What other suitors?" she demanded. "I thought you said they were married."

"She was kidnapped on their wedding night." Was it her imagination or was he… blushing? "The marriage was… ah… not yet consummated."

"And it matters because…"

"It used to. May I continue?"

Watching him read, seeing the light in his face that had never been there at any point when he was among other Reavers, it suddenly occurred to her why she _cared_. It was his eyes. Unlike all others - including those she saw in the mirror every morning - that were hard and unyielding, his were warm and kind.

Aleta forced herself to turn away.

The day before his First Contest, she didn't sleep, head racing with plans, each more outlandish than the last. Awareness of the flaws in her world didn't instantly put her on the path of - or even in the mindframe for - rebellion. The woman she would become many years later would have gladly burnt everything about the already rotting Reaver society to the ground. The girl she was then just wanted to save her friend.

Stakar wasn't there the next day, much to her dismay. Not appearing for one's First Contest was tantamount to forfeit, not just the contest but one's life with it. That hardly mattered in his case, and more than likely it was for the better at least in the short-term, but Aleta still felt the irrational annoyance of having to track him down. It was a safe bet that he was once again at the temple, which meant another long hike.

But just as she was about to cross the crest of the last hill, less than an hour away from the temple, Aleta forgot all her complaints. A sudden bright light burst to life over ruins, and for a split second she couldn't help but wonder if the temple's god had come back for vengeance for disturbing it. The truth became evident to her only an instant; the light was coming from a hovering craft. Unable to make out all of it, she nevertheless saw enough to realize that it was like nothing the Reavers had. A figure was standing right below it, and though she couldn't clearly make him out, Aleta had no doubt that it was Stakar.

Summoning all her strength, she ran.

The sight that greeted her when she skidded to a halt in front of the temple, just a few steps behind her friend was one that took a moment to process. The alien ship hovered before her with its ramp lowered, and a dark-haired man in a blue jacket stood on the ground right in front of it, his appearance indistinguishable from any of the healthy residents of Arcturus IV. He frowned when he saw her, saying something in a language she didn't understand, but apparently Stakar did because he pointed to her and answered.

"This is Aleta Ogord. She means you no harm."

"That remains to be seen," Aleta muttered mostly to herself, then leaned over to him slightly. "Who are these people?"

To her surprise, the man answered, and though she still couldn't understand him, she heard his tone to be calm, perhaps even a little amused. It confused her why, when he apparently understood them both, did he not answer in their language. Again Stakar seemed to translate.

"His name is Captain Vance," he told her. "They're mostly scavengers and marauder. They came for the treasure within the temple."

"Looters." Aleta made a face, though she had no real feelings about the hord.

The man - Vance - smirked and said something else. Stakar sighed and looked at her. "He says you're welcome to try and stop them."

"Tell him he can't handle me," she suggested, and the man actually threw his head back and laughed. Aleta did her best to ignore him and turned to her friend. "How is it that you can understand him but I can't?"

Stakar brushed back the hair over his right ear, and she noticed something tiny within it. "Universal translator. The space-faring races of the universe all have them. Apparently it used to be common practice on Arcturus as well, but… well… no one from this world has left the confines of this planet in a long time."

"And they just gave you one?"

"No, I made it." She stared at him. "What? You think _all_ those ancient books had nothing but epic poetry in them?"

Their 'guest' looked mildly confused and pointed between the two of them questioningly. Stakar winced. "No." The man said something else. "Again, no. Look, can we have a moment?"

The captain nodded, and Stakar lead her away, far enough that they were still within sight of the ship but well outside earshot. Feeling more than a little confused and annoyed at this point, Aleta glared at him.

"Now what did he say?"

Stakar actually fidgeted. "He… ah… he asked if you were my sister."

"What? No!" Inexplicably, the assumption profoundly irked her. "Why in the world would he think _that_?"

"Because I _might_ have given them your family name as my own? Sorry. It was the first thing that came to my mind when they asked me who I was."

 _Stakar Ogord_. It didn't sound too bad. Her heart softened a bit, and she smirked. "I'm surprised he didn't assume we were married."

"That _was_ his second guess." Now he _really_ looked embarrassed, so Aleta decided not to torture him further.

"Tell me what's going on," she asked more gently.

He sighed and ran a hand through his dark hair. "I'm not stupid or suicidal, despite what you might think. I know full well what the First Contest meant for me. I also knew that Arcturus used to be different, more advanced, more… evolved. We're not encouraged to search for answers, but the signs are everywhere. Even within a single generation, technology has deteriorated, and I know I don't need to comment other kinds of decay. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this isn't going to end well. Aleta, this world is dying."

She swallowed hard. The declaration didn't shock her. She'd known it for a while now, but it still hurt to hear. "So you decided to forgo your First Contest because… why bother?"

"In part, but more than that, I decided it was more useful to devote my time to finding a better way out. And I did. I called to the stars, and the stars answered."

"Your stars are space pirates," she pointed out.

He spread his hands. "I must admit I wasn't expecting that. But the captain agreed to take me on as crew and share the profits of the treasure in the temple when they sell it. I'll be able to go anywhere in the galaxy, see anything, do anything. This is the kind of freedom we've never even dreamed of."

Aleta sniffed, horrified to realize that the stinging sensation in her nose might well have been the prelude to tears. She hadn't cried since she was a very small child. "I'm happy for you."

"Come with me."

She recoiled. "What?"

"Come with me," he repeated, grasping her hand, and Aleta was too shocked to pull away. "This world is beyond saving. Moreover it doesn't _want_ to be saved. It has a generation left within it, two at the most. Nothing you do here will ever matter, but out there…"

"You didn't even bother to tell me you were planning to leave!" She yanked her hand away, for some reason more angry at that than his presumption that she could so quickly abandon her parents, her whole world, rotten though it was.

"I knew you would find me here when I didn't show up to the First Contest." The corner of Stakar's mouth curved slightly. "That's why I asked the captain for a place for both of us."

Aleta crossed her arms. "You assume much."

"I never assume," he corrected. "I can only hope. The fact you're here at all when you could have stayed back and simply listened to them call for my execution tells me that you don't accept things as they are. Of course the choice to do anything about it is, and always has been, yours to make. As I've made mine."

Her head was spinning. Never before had Aleta Ogord felt so confused and conflicted. If she went with him, she'd have to… What? Was there anything back in the Reavers' city for her to go back to collect? Even the idea of saying goodbye to her distant parents held little emotional necessity. Suddenly it dawned on her that the true reason for her turmoil was because she'd never really had any actual choices in her life before. None that mattered, anyway.

Years later, their friends would speculate that they did it for love. Running away from their homeworld to be together sounded like a romantic notion, and neither Aleta nor Stakar bothered to correct it. But that simply hadn't been the case.

The truth was that they both did it for freedom.

A while later, sitting within the alien ship side by side as the crew finished loading as much of the hoard as they could carry into the cargo hold, something else came to her among the whirlwind within her mind. Aleta snorted and shook her head, mentally chiding herself. Next to her, Stakar raised a questioning brow, and she gave him a sidelong look, slightly sheepish.

"I thought I was coming here to save you."

Her companion laughed. "Give it time. There's a lot of space out there for me to get in trouble in."

They sat in silence for a short while, listening as the engines roar to life and the unintelligible chatter around them. The captain had promised them both new universal translators. The one Stakar had built would serve for now, but it was based on an older, cruder design. Apparently new ones were actually implants. Aleta watched the more alien-looking of the crew members hussle about, curious to know what they were talking about. It would certainly take some getting used to, but for now she was perfectly content just to speak with Stakar.

"You can keep it, you know," she said abruptly. "My family name. As far as I'm concerned, you more than fulfilled your First Contest."

He pressed his mouth into a tight line, and she wasn't sure which emotion exactly he was trying to keep in check. Wordlessly, his hand reached out for hers and their fingers intertwined.

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 _ **Author's End Note:**_ How Alexander Pushkin's epic poem 'Ruslan and Ludmila' ended up in a temple on Arcturus IV, I have no idea, but I'm gonna go with it :)


	3. Part III

_**Author's Note:**_ As promised, a rating bump. I wouldn't be opposed to writing more with these two *blushes* Enjoy and please review!

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It would be a long while until the group they belonged to would be known known as Ravagers. By that time, matching bands adorned their fingers. Many people upon being introduced to the pair assumed they were married because of the shared name, and it was yet another misconception they didn't bother to correct since they very rarely stayed in one place for long.

She could not even begin to recall the exact moment she fell in love with him, but Aleta did remember the moment she knew it to be so. While navigating the streets of Knowhere to drop off smuggled goods for a fence, they were met with a gang of small children running in their direction. Well aware by now to watch their wallets, Aleta wasn't the least bit surprised when Stakar suddenly grabbed a small hand that had reached inside his coat pocket and spun the girl attached to it around until she faced them.

"I'll teach you lesson one," he towered over the child. "Pick smaller targets until your thieving skills improve considerably. Understand?"

The girl nodded hastily, wide eyed and clearly frightened. Understandable, because by age twenty, Stakar easily had two feet and a hundred and fifty pounds on her. Aleta knew he would never harm the child, just scare her a little, but still what he did next managed to surprise her. Getting down on one knee in front of the girl, he made a show of looking over her shoulder. Most of the other kids scattered but one little boy remained, nervously peeking out from behind a stack of crates. Stakar turned back to the girl.

"That your brother?" She nodded, and he pulled a few units out of his pocket and held them up between two fingers for her to see. "I'll give you these if you promise to _only_ spend it on food for the two of you. Alright?"

The girl nodded again, this time more enthusiastically and with considerably less fear on her face. He handed over the bit of money, and the child ran off in the direction of her younger sibling. Stakar rose again and turned back to her with a satisfied smile, and for the second time in their lives, she noted the warmth in his eyes again. Last time she'd forced herself to look away, but now, outside of the Reavers' oppressive influence, there was no need for it.

Aleta found her heart racing like never before.

She knew she was distant all throughout their shared meal, lost in the tunnel of memory, of trying to recall every single interaction they've ever had. Stakar kept giving her sidelong, slightly-worries looks but said nothing until they reached their hotel room. Crowded ships and cramped quarters had long ago taught both the fine art of sharing small spaces, and there was no reason to spend more money than necessary. Turning away from each other as they changed, Stakar finally spoke up.

"You've been very quiet tonight."

"Humm," Aleta pulled on the last strap of her nightgown. "I was thinking about Arcturus."

It was half true, but perhaps she should have chosen a better way to avoid his question, because there was an unmistakeable tense pause. They hadn't spoken of their home planet in years, not particularly out of any kind of trauma but because there hadn't been a need for it.

"Do you regret leaving?" When he did speak, there was clear concern in his voice.

"Not for an instance," she replied honestly and could hear his sigh of relief from the opposite side of the room.

"Then what is it?"

Finally turning enough to meet his questioning gaze, she wondered how to organize her thoughts into something more coherent that she could verbalize. Frustratingly, even that train of thought was momentarily derailed when she saw him. Being around someone nearly constantly, especially since childhood, tended to cause one to dismiss their companion's looks, but taking in his broad shoulders and bare chest, Aleta was startled to suddenly realize that he _was_ very handsome. And, if the way he swallowed hard and glanced away was any indication, it seemed like he wasn't entirely oblivious to her either.

"How long have you been in love with me?"

He didn't react in any way that she might have expected, just sighed heavily, "Do you really want to ask that?"

It wasn't a challenge, she realized, but a way out. There was still room to turn back, if she so chose. He hadn't exactly confirmed her suspicions, and either way it had a good chance of making things extremely awkward between them. Still, never one to back down, Aleta raised her chin slightly. "Yes."

Stakar inclined his head in acquiescence. "My first memory," he said quietly, "was of being brought back to the Reavers' city by your father."

She had been four years old, and while Aleta knew the event happened, she could barely remember it. "How is that possible? You were barely three, if that."

His mouth curved. "I have a very good memory. Actually the truth is I don't remember much of that day. Not my biological parents, not the soldiers, not the march back to the city. Only you."

"Are you _actually_ saying you've _always_ been in love with me?" She tried not to sound dismayed but it was all just too… pulp fiction. Stakar made a helpless gesture, so she took pity on him. "Why didn't you ever tell me?"

"It's been such a… such a constant of my life, I can't even remember when I came to realize what it was. When we were on Arcturus, there were far too many other concerns. After…" he paused and finally met her eyes, "it's always been lady's choice."

"Lady's choice?" Aleta intentionally folded her arms under her breasts, now fully cognizant of just how aware he was of that action. "That's unfortunate."

If anyone else was there at the moment, they would have probably observed Stakar's face remain completely impassive. Aleta knew better; he was disappointed, likely taking her statement as rejection, though he was trying hard to hide it. Her arms dropped to her sides as she walked over to where he sat on his own bed, mid-thigh nightgown flowing behind her. Only stopping when their bare knees bumped together, she looked down at him impassively.

"It's unfortunate," she repeated, "because I believe we can both agree I can be a bit slow on the uptake. Had you told me this earlier," she took his hands and very meaningfully settled them on her hips, "the last few years might have been a lot more… pleasurable."

With that, she bent down and covered his lips with her own.

Afterwards, lying in a sated heap of tangled limbs and sheets, Aleta idly glanced across the room at her own, still-neatly made bed. Oh, how much fun they could have making a mess there later. The idea made her let out an uncharacteristically girlish giggle, which in turn caused Stakar to take notice. Laying with his chest to her back and his right arm wrapped around her waist, he bumped her shoulder with his chin in question, and Aleta had to stifle another laugh.

"I vote for one large bed in hotels from now on," she said, and he hummed in agreement. Another thought sprang into her mind, and she reached down and laced her fingers in his, squeezing slightly. "I _do_ love you."

Because she'd essentially forced him to reveal his feelings for her, and in no way did she want him to think she was taking advantage of that. Stakar chuckled and pressed his lips to her bare shoulder, so she figured he couldn't be too upset.

"Should I ask how long _you've_ known?" he teased. "Wait, no. Let me guess." He made a grand gesture of lifting his arm to look at an imaginary watch. "About… six to twelve hours."

She playfully smacked his arm. "And how did you come up with that brilliant calculation, oh, One-Who-Knows?"

"You've been very quiet this evening," he repeated, not taking the bait of the age-old teasing insult. "And you're a very decisive woman. Once your mind is made up about something, action is quick to follow. As you said, had you realized it earlier, that's when we would have been here."

That was eerily accurate, but Aleta wasn't about to give him the satisfaction of admitting it. Reaching behind, she gave his ass a squeeze for emphasis. "Maybe I just decided I liked the way this looked in those new pants."

Instead of a verbal response, she found herself flipped over as Stakar loomed above her, every inch hard once more against her stomach. He palmed a breast and kissed her, pulling back only long enough to ask, "Again?"

 _Oh, yes..._

Truth be told, little changed after that night. Work remained the same, the jobs more or less small-time and nothing either lost any sleep over. Sleep _was_ lost for other, much more enjoyable reasons, which meant that the only thing that really changed was the type of hotel room they requested.

The next thing of note took place half a year later, and there was only one other person alive who had even an inkling of how badly it went. It was lucky, then, that he ended up as one of their closest lifelong friends.

Stakar had, to Aleta's memory, never been drunk in his life. Such an indiscretion would have been disastrous back on Arcturus, and while they'd both been out for drinks with acquaintances through various jobs, those nights usually ended earlier for the two of them. But this time, after a successful run at one of the most lucrative - and seedy - trading posts on Hala, Aleta excused herself from the celebration to run a few personal errands. When she return to the port, the site that greeted her was comical to say the least.

The bar was filled with bodies. Still-living bodies, as far as she could tell, but passed out in every imaginable position all over the entire expanse of the hall. The only two that remained sitting at a table to the right were her partner and the biggest man she'd ever seen in all her years of travel through space. Carefully stepping around discarded glassware, Aleta walked over to them, and Stakar looked up at her, grinning and glassy-eyed.

"Look, 'Leta! I made a friend! Charlie, have you met my..."

He frowned, as if suddenly uncertain what to call her. That much Aleta could sympathise with, but now was not the time to dwell on it. Setting the question aside, she patted his shoulder and looked over at the big man, whom she already knew, of course.

"Hello, Charlie."

"Lady Ogord," Charlie-27, one of their crew on the Hala run, inclined his head respectfully. Unsurprisingly there wasn't a trace of intoxication evident anywhere in his expression. Aleta turned back to her... companion.

"Stakar," she said with as much patience as she could, "did you happen to get into a drinking contest with a heavy gravity worlder?"

He blinked at her. "What?"

If the countless empty glasses were any indication, she didn't really need him to answer the question. Charlie towered two feet over the tallest person in the room and outweighed them many times over due to his dense physiology that allowed him to withstand the heavy gravity of his home planet. Getting into a drinking contest with him was a sure way to end up under the table at best, and Stakar was usually so _so_ much smarter than this. Aleta said as much, and Charlie laughed.

"In fairness," he said, "it was not _only_ him. The bet was against the whole crew. He's just the only one left standing. More or less."

"That's comforting," Aleta said flatly and tugged on Stakar's arm. It was like pulling on a dead weight. "Come on. Let's get you to bed. Can you walk?"

"Heh, bed… Oh!" His eyes lit up with a momentary burst of clarity as if struck by the most brilliant idea in the universe. "We should get married! Then I could say, ' _This_ … this is my wife.' Yes! Definitely!"

"Definitely _not_."

Charlie threw back his head and howled with laughter, and Aleta pressed her mouth into a tight line. Not particularly angry or even annoyed, it was still a new experience, that was for sure. She'd seen virtually every type of drunk, but none that she had to deal with personally. At least Charlie was gracious enough to help her navigate him back to their room and deposit him on the bed before waving them goodnight.

Finally alone, she helped Stakar out of his boots and jacket before giving up on the rest. Halfway passed out already, Aleta figured he could sleep as he was and went to change before getting under the covers to get comfortable. Just because he was going to wake up with a massive headache, didn't mean she had to. But the moment she was in bed, he rolled over on his stomach and threw an arm around her. Aleta sighed; so much for a good night sleep.

The earlier question still nagged at her, though. It wasn't just the inebriation: since getting together, introductions had somehow become awkward. What _were_ they supposed to call each other? No longer simply friends or teammates, a term like 'lovers' was too personal in public while the likes of 'boyfriend' or 'girlfriend' were woefully insufficient for two people who had been circling each other like a binary stars practically their whole lives. But what he'd said...

"Alright," she whispered finally. "Let's get married."

Next to her, Stakar stirred and pulled her closer to him.

Morning was… interesting. Apparently she'd managed to sleep through his multiple trips to the bathroom in the middle of the night and ordering room service in the morning. By the time she was up, he was already halfway through a third cup of coffee, though judging by the intense look of pain on his face, it was doing little for the expected headache. Aleta sat up and ran a hand through her hair.

"So," she cleared her throat. "How much do you remember of the least romantic proposal in history?"

He winced over his cup. "Mine or yours?"

"I don't know. They were both pretty spectacular." She paused. Somehow this was even more awkward than the first night they'd made their feelings known. "Do you want to?"

Mutely, he nodded. She did the same. "Alright, then."

* * *

 _ **Author's End Note:**_ The next and last chapter will actually take place after the end of "For Whom the Bell Tolls" so if you haven't read that fic yet, go read it.


	4. Part IV

_**Author's Note:**_ This last short, part takes place after the end of "For Whom the Bell Tolls".

* * *

Aleta woke slowly, with the lingering disorientation that came with not waking up in one's own bed. Hardly a typical experience for her, she lay motionless for a moment, increasingly aware of the sensation of a foreign mattress, sheets, and most importantly, a very masculine arm wrapped around her torso, its hand resting lightly at her left breast.

It was that last part that finally made everything click into place for her.

Since the very beginning of their intimate relationship, somehow they'd always fallen asleep and awoke like this. At first she'd teased Stakar that he couldn't pass up the opportunity to touch her - far from the worst qualities to have in a husband - but she quickly realized that it was simply that he liked the feel of her heartbeat against his palm. Regardless of long stretches of separation, that hadn't changed.

Judging by the lack of any discernible light from beyond the window shades, it was not even close to dawn yet. She wasn't sure what had woken her, but nearly the same moment her mind came into full awareness, Stakar stirred behind her.

"You're thinking too loud," he complained, voice thick and hoarse from sleep.

"That's really what woke you?"

In response, he tapped his fingers against the skin above her breast. "Elevated heart rate."

Aleta snorted. "Can you blame me? I can't say that I've missed sleeping alone."

"Agreed." Her husband's fingers traced a path along the naked skin of her side down to her hip, pleasant but not quite arousing. "Though I _do_ miss being twenty right about now."

"To be fair," she pointed out reasonably, "we learned a thing or two since we were twenty."

"A very generous answer," Stakar's arm tightened around her torso once again. "Can we go back to sleep now? I promise I'll be much more entertaining come morning."

Morning came with a very much fulfilled promises. After which, being in no particular hurry to go anywhere, the two were content to lounge around in bed, a luxury that would have been nearly impossible aboard either _Dauntless_ or _Freedom's Lady_. Aleta even said as much.

"Do you remember _Starhawk_?"

Leaning against the pillows in a half-sitting position, Stakar frowned. "That relic?"

"I'll have you know I have very found memories of that ship!" she slapped his chest lightly in chastisement. "It was our engagement gift to ourselves."

"Yes, and it was barely space-worthy when we bought it. Forgive me, but I have no nostalgic feelings about hardware."

Aleta rolled her eyes, but even she had to admit everything he said was true. She'd been scoping out a ship of their own while Stakar, Charlie-27, and the rest of the crew from the Hala run were out celebrating. At the time, she hadn't realized it would end up as an engagement present, but it had worked out nicely for the most part. Cast from an older model which would later evolve into the one now now used to build M-ships, it was small, but perfectly suited for two people. It was Stakar who had named it _Starhawk_ in honor of the avian god from the temple on Arcturus.

Like that temple, the ship had given them freedom.

"Don't you just want to run away sometimes?"

She loved _Dauntless_ fiercely, but sometimes Aleta couldn't help but wish they were back on _Starhawk_ again, just the two of them. Two, because the barest thought of their children hurt more than words could possibly express. Stakar looked like he was turning the thought over in his head, then nodded, lips curving with some mischief.

"If you want to make this a regular thing, I'm more than happy to oblige."

She chuckled. "That's not quite what I meant, but yes, regular is good."

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Stakar tilt his head as he studied her. Aleta knew he was trying to read her, understand where her mind was at that moment. The last few nights, their first back together in years, had been wonderful, and it was easy for her to forget… everything. But they weren't running away, not really. Somewhere just a few jumps away, _Dauntless_ and _Freedom's Lady_ awaited their captains' return. On the morning of their last day, she wanted nothing more than to stay anchored to the moment, the sensation of lying in bed next to her husband, but the real world's pull was growing more and more insistent.

Aleta took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Stakar…"

"Uh-oh." Under her head, she could feel the muscles of his outstretched arm going taught. "Why do I get the feeling I'm about to hear those four words every man dreads?"

"We need to talk."

"I was afraid of that." His tone was resigned. "Am I going to want to be dressed for this?"

"Yes."

He nodded slowly, detangled himself from her, and disappeared into the adjacent bathroom, leaving her alone to think. The idea of fighting with him about Yondu and the _Eclector_ while still in bed didn't appeal. Fighting at all didn't appeal, but Aleta knew it was unavoidable. She had every confidence in his ability to see reason eventually, but in the meantime there was bound to be a backlash. As the one who'd freed the Centaurian and known him the longest, Stakar saw the actions that lead to Yondu's exile as a personal betrayal, and that was not going to be easy to move past. Despite the image he fostered with the majority of the Ravagers, Stakar was the more emotional of the two of them.

She was still sitting in the middle of the bed, lost in thought, when her husband remerged, dressed in trousers and a loose shirt, and suddenly Aleta was very aware of her own nakedness. Not something she particularly cared about - even before the start of their relationship decades prior - now it served to create a large power imbalance, though in whose favor, she wasn't certain. Aleta hated that the thought even entered her mind, but ultimately she was a child of Arcturus.

Rising from the bed and letting the sheets fall behind her, she padded across the floor until they were barely an inch apart.

"No matter how much you hate what I'm about to say," Aleta placed both palms against his chest, "please don't let it be more than how much you love me."

Stakar gathered both of her hands in his one large one and brought them to his lips before pressing them back over his heart. In that moment, despite all her fears, she knew they would be alright.

* * *

 _ **Author's End Note:**_ I'm not 100% happy with this part because certain elements of it belong in this fic, but others belong in the next so I chose to save them. Stakar and Aleta have such a fascinating relationship, they really deserved their own fic before I plunge them into arguing about Yondu. Fun fact: all the names and places I mentioned in this fic are comic book canon. Starhawk, in particular, is a merged being of Stakar and Aleta, but I figured having it as the name of their first solo ship makes more sense. Hope you enjoyed it!


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